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Identifying Destructive Cults from the Motives of the Hierarch to Create the Cult

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Identifying Destructive Cults from the Motives of the Hierarch to Create the Cult US-China Education Review B, April 2018, Vol. 8, No. 4, 166-173 doi: 10.17265/2161-6248/2018.04.005 D DAVID PUBLISHING Identifying Destructive Cults From the Motives of the Hierarch to Create the Cult Zhang Yu-ding, Tan Yu-xin, Yan Mei-fu Hubei University, Wuhan, China It is a customary manipulation for destructive cult to deceive followers under the guise of orthodox religion. Thus, if only to reveal the words and deeds, it is difficult for the dupes to know destructive cult correctly and then break away from it, because understanding the reason for the words and deeds of a man is more important than what he says and does. Based on this, this article puts forward a psychological way to distinguish and recognize orthodox religion and destructive cult: All the motives of the hierarch to create the traditional religion are kind, loving, even noble, and great, while the motives of the hierarch to create destructive cult are to defraud the power to control, deceive sex, and swindle wealth. Keywords: motive, orthodox religion, destructive cult, Buddhism, Christianism, Islamism A Psychological Way to Distinguish Destructive Cult Various destructive cults have been rampant on the mainland China since the reform and opening up. In the name of orthodox religion, they deceived the followers of Buddha and Jesus, causing the followers to fall into the abyss of destructive cult without distinction between truth and falsehood. And once they fall into it, even if the rescuers tell them the “evil”, “false”, and “cheat” of destructive cult with facts, they turn a deaf ear, so that it is often wasted words. Instead, they firmly believed that what they embrace is orthodox religion but not destructive cult, the hierarches are true Gods and Buddhas who are the largest Buddhas in the universe, and the fallacies and heresies are universal truths. But the fact is that these hierarches of destructive cult who pretends to be Gods and Buddhas are neither an expert scholar nor a highly skilled talent of the senior social, much less a hero model who has made great contributions to the society and the common people. Moreover, they are farmers with primary or junior high school education or other extremely ordinary members of society who only know a few Chinese characters. However, once in the name of orthodox religion, they fabricate a fallacy to masquerade as orthodox religion and claim to be a God or Buddha by boasting. Then they can be the hierarches of destructive cult who can easily be worshipped and adored by thousands of people as the Gods and Buddhas of orthodox religion to control these people and play them in their hands. What is more, it can convince believers that what the hierarches of destructive cult have created is a true religion that can take them to heaven but not destructive cult called by the rescuers. It is hard for believers to wake up even if they are told the truth that they have been Zhang Yu-ding (corresponding author), associate professor, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Hubei University. Tan Yu-xin, master degree candidate, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Hubei University. Yan Mei-fu, professor, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Hubei University. IDENTIFYING DESTRUCTIVE CULTS FROM THE MOTIVES 167 tricked into being mentally controlled. Destructive cult’s intrigue of mixing the genuine with the fictitious creates an insurmountable obstacle for the treatment of destructive cult believers. For example, we have been familiar with the process for Li Hongzhi, the master of the Falun Gong Organization, to become a hierarch of the cult. He started primary school at the age of eight and was a middle school graduate during the Great Cultural Revolution. He played the trumpet at the musical instrument class of Mao Zedong ideological propaganda team in the People’s Liberation Army, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, 201 Troops, August 1st Army Racecourse, and the art propaganda team of Jilin Provincial Forest Police General Team. After the disbanding of the literary and art propaganda team, he served as a waiter for four years at the literary and art propaganda detachment hostel because he did not have a high level of literacy and special skills. Then, he was seconded to Changchun Grain, Oil, and Food Corporation as director of the Security Department. After maintaining his position but stop paying, he falsely used the name of religion, Qigong or even science to wantonly plagiarise and distort Buddhist nouns, fabricate Karmic theory, consummation theory, doomsday argument, and so on, to found the Falun Gong cult. To people’s surprise, he was able to make millions of deceived people, including someone with high education and social experience, fall into the trap of his Falun Gong cult in just a few years. These people worshipped and superstited him from the bottom of one’s heart, adored him, regarded him as a God and respected him as their father (even believers in their 70 and 80 call him Master and it is noted that there has always been a saying in China that “teachers and disciples are like fathers and sons”). Among them, many people ruined their family or dead because of the deeply false belief. But when social workers treated them sensibly, it was hard or even impossible for some of them to find out that he established the organization of destructive cult in the name religion and Qigong. Faced with the difficult problem, psychologists believes that it is hard for believers to recognize the evil nature of destructive cult only by revealing that destructive cult is a deceptive organization in the name of religion from the words and deeds of the hierarch. It is necessary to expose deeply from the psychological activities of the hierarch, that is, from the motives and purposes of creating the cult to make the cult followers see clearly the true features of the cult: “evil”, “false”, and “deceptive”. In psychology, although motivation does not account for what the activity is and how going on, it explains why individuals or organizations engage in such activities. In our daily life, to know a person or an organization, we need not only to listen to their words and deeds, but also be aware of the intentions and purposes behind words and deeds, which mean understanding the motivation of his/her behavior. That is to say, it is much more important to know the reason for the words and deeds of a person or organization than to know what he/she says and does. The action of creating a cult from the hierarch for Orthodox religions and all kinds of cults are governed by motives. We can effectively identify the hierarch of destructive cult and the cult created by him/her through analyzing and exploring the purposes for the hierarch, including the hierarch of destructive cult, to create or expand their cult. Motivation can reveal the intentions of the founders from all kinds of cults under their deep minds. The Motives for the Founders of Traditional Religions Although, among the traditional religions, it is hard for some of the ancient religions that took place in the 3,000 or 4,000 years B.C. to find the specific founders, much less to analyze their motives for founding the religion, such as the early Brahmins in India, Judaism on which Christianity depends, etc. Nevertheless, some of the later traditional religions, such as Christianism, Buddhism, Islamism, and the various denominations that 168 IDENTIFYING DESTRUCTIVE CULTS FROM THE MOTIVES emerged in the world after World War II, all had their own founders, which enables us to judge the motivation and purpose of their founding religion according to their activities and doctrines to identify whether their religion is destructive cult. If the motives for the founders of traditional religions are compared with that of destructive cult hierarch, it is easy to find that the motives of the traditional religions are all good, loving, even noble, and great. Though, as Marx said (Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin works compiled by the CPC Central Committee, 1999), “Religion is the sigh of oppressed beings, the feeling of the merciless world, just as it is the spirit of a system without spirit. Religion is the opium of the people”. There is no denying that religion does have the effect of escaping real suffering, auto-narcosis, being oppressed, and not thinking of resistance, but it cannot be negated that the sympathy from the founders of these traditional religions for those who struggle in the midst of suffering and their loving heart to all mortal beings. Therefore, as far as their motive for establishing their religion is concerned, it should be said that the motives are out of the total and selfless love and salvation of mankind. As a result, these traditional religions are widely spread around the world, attracting nearly 80% of the world’s people to believe in them. Although the founders of these traditional religions have passed away for thousands of years, a generation of believers still adores and worships them, build gold statues and temples for them and burn incense and pray for them, in which there must be a reasonable reason since it is impossible for a opium giver to do so. It can be seen from the basic doctrines of some traditional religions that the motives for the leaders of the traditional religions are good. Buddhism believes that life is full all kinds of pains as suffering, illness, death, and so on. The reason for Sakyamuni creating Buddhism is to establish Buddhist doctrines through his own insight under the Bodhi tree, the understanding to the causes of human suffering and the elimination of it, grasping the path to a happy paradise, drawing up a set of ways to get rid of suffering and precepts, and spreading Buddhism all around the world, so that to help the believers get out of the sea of suffering, and finally, achieve the goal of universal salvation.
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